Finding Aids

Founded in 1846, Pennsylvania Railroad Company (PRR) was a leading industrial and transportation force throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This collection features a cyanotype and a photographic copy print of an image depicting the first passenger car created for PRR, most likely taken in 1893 in relation to Chicago World's Columbian Exposition.

Founded in 1934, the Association of American Railroads is a leading railway organization that focuses on productivity and safety of the U.S. rail industry. Members include major freight railroads in North America and Amtrak. This collection is an educational kit composed of three parts created by the Association of American Railroads. There are two teacher's manuals and loose photographs.

The Alan Wood Steel Company was a small, family-controlled integrated steel company. The Upper Merion & Plymouth Railroad connected all the elements of the Wood steel-making complex. The collection includes three blueprint maps showing the layout of industrial buildings at Alan Wood Steel Company and the track of the Upper Merion and Plymouth Railroad Company. Also in the collection is a stereograph featuring a blast furnace plant in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Allen H. Tweddle (1949-) is a retired railroad conductor and avid collector of railroadiana. Railroadiana are artifacts related to current or former railways. This small collection consists of photographs, prints, and note cards related to railroad locomotives. There are photographs of train stations, train cars and engines and one stereoview showing an elevated railway street scene of New York City. There is an album containing many different Amtrak trains, several blotters from the Association of American Railroads, and a few series of note cards. Notably there is a large collection of railroad locomotive trading cards from the Topps Chewing Gum Company series called "Rails and Sails" published in 1954.

This collection contains two pieces of sheet music: "Volume for Victory," the song of the A.C.F. (American Car and Foundry Company) and "Hamiltonia," song of the Hamilton Watch Company. The American Car and Foundry, Company was founded in 1899 and is still considered a leading American manufacturer of railcars and railcar parts. The Hamilton Watch Company was founded in Lancaster, Pennsylvania in 1892. Among other milestones, it produced the first electric wristwatch in 1957 and the first digital watch in 1970. The Hamilton brand is currently owned and manufactured by the The Swatch Group out of Switzerland.

The National Railroad Passenger Corporation, Amtrak, is a passenger rail service in the United States. This item is a standard twelve-month calendar, with an image on the top portion of each month featuring an Amtrak train.

Baldwin Locomotive Works was a manufacturer of railroad locomotives from 1825 until 1972. The company was originally located in Philadelphia and then later moved to Eddystone, Pennsylvania. This album contains twenty two photographs of Baldwin Locomotive Works train engines, train cars, and parts. The album appears to have been created by company President S.M. Vauclain for the Trades Exhibit at the Constitutional Centennial Celebration.

Baldwin Locomotive Works was a manufacturer of railroad locomotives from 1825 until 1972. This image shows group of about forty male employes and fifteen factory visitors or managers posed on a 8-inch (?) railway gun mount in the Eddystone, Pennsylvania, plant.

The Budd Company was a manufacturer of steel automobiles, passenger rail cars, and other transportation products. This collection of photographs include railcar interiors, exteriors, and construction progress images of vehicles for the Budd Company customers between 1931 and 1987. Fifty-four railroads are represented in the collection, but half consist of only a small number of images.

The Budd Company was a manufacturer of steel automobiles, passenger rail cars, and other transportation products. This collection’s photographs focuses on the Budd Company rail division with some images of automobiles and wheel products and manufacturing. The bulk of the materials date from the 1940s, 1950s and the 1980s. The collection is organized into five series: Company executives and employees; Plants and manufacturing; Products; Advertising; and Films and videos.

The Centennial International Exhibition of 1876 celebrated the one hundreth anniversary of American Independence. Held in Fairmount Park in Philadelphia, it was the first major U.S. world's fair. This collection contains Centennial Exhibition photographs, albums, scrapbooks, and ephemera

World Fairs or International Expositions are large-scale exhibitions highlighting technology, agriculture, and other innovations of national or cultural significance. The Chicago Century of Progress International Exposition was held along Lake Michigan and Northerly Island Park from May 27, 1933 to October 31, 1934. The collection consists of forty-five identical gummed stickers. The stickers feature an image of an approaching Pennsylvania Railroad locomotive.

Charles Mattathias Jacobs (1850-1919) was a British tunneling engineer. This is a digital copy of a painting of Jacobs at approximately sixty years of age, in court dress.

The Chicago Railroad Fair was the last exposition that featured railroads as its theme. It marked the centennial of the arrival of railroads to Chicago and their role in westward expansion. The exposition was held in 1948 and 1949 in Chicago. This collection consists of souvenir postcards and miniature photographic views of the buildings and locomotives at the Fair.

Coal Lands Securities Co. was one of several mining companies owned in large portion by Thomas J. Foster (1843-1936), a publisher. Lackawanna Coal and Lumber Company and Highland Lumber Company were also part of Foster's holdings. The album contains photographs taken during an inspection trip made by a party from the Coal Lands Securities Company to properties in West Virginia owned by the Lackawanna Coal and Lumber Company and the Highland Lumber Company.

The Consolidated Rail Corporation (Conrail) was incorporated in October 1974. It was formed under the auspices of the United States Railway Association, a quasi-public agency established for the purpose of solving the problems of bankrupt railroads in the Northeast and Midwest. The Conrail photograph collection consists of a large number of images from its company files, but the majority of the material comes from its predecessor companies: Pennsylvania Railroad and Penn Central Transportation Company. These items are predominanatly composed of photographs, negatives, transparencies, lantern slides, and films.

These photographs document the abandoned site where the Peoples Railway trolley car passed under the tracks of the Wilmington and Northern Railroad in Rockford Park near the Brandywine Creek. The Peoples Railway Company started in 1900 to bring visitors via electric trolley to the Brandywine Springs Amusement Park outside of Wlimington. The Wilmington and Northern Railroad Company was a branch of the Reading railroad system running in a north-south direction between Wilmington, Delware and Reading, Pennsylvania. Its object was to connect the various industrial plants located along Brandywine Creek with other railroads leading to the west and to the anthracite coal regions.

David Harrison Cope (1913-2001) held a lifelong interest in railroads and, in particular, steam locomotives. He began collecting photographs at an early age. This collection primarily consists of black and white photographs and negatives of steam locomotives from a variety of railroads, but it includes some other rolling stock, station photos, related railroad items such as coaling stations and some street railroads, interurbans, and trolley images.

The Chicago Railroad Fair was the first exposition after the Second World War and the last exposition that featured railroads as its theme. It marked the centennial of the arrival of railroads to Chicago and their role in westward expansion. This is a postcard of the narrow gauge Deadwood Central train that carried visitors around the fairground.

The War Department of the United States Government contracted with the DuPont Company to build and run a smokeless powder plant called the Old Hickory plant on the Cumberland River near Nashville, Tennessee during World War I. These panoramic photographs show overall views of DuPont Company's Old Hickory smokeless powder plant, also views of exterior and interior details.

Frank A. Weer (1932-2019) was an employee of the Reading Company and an enthusiastic photographer of all things related to railroads, specifically in Pennsylvania. Fascinated by trains from a young age, Weer spent time taking photographs of the passing rolling stock. He developed his own photographs, and over time, he established a vast collection of photographic prints of steam locomotives and other rolling stock, as well as the railroad tracks and structures with which the railroad was affiliated. The Reading Company, where Weer worked for thirteen years, was an influential railroad company that served the economic development of the Greater Philadelphia area for over 100 years. Before it became a booming passenger railroad, the Reading Company began transporting anthracite coal. The passenger "ridership" of the Reading Company reached its peak in the 1950s. The company went bankrupt in 1971, and the passenger services were taken over by the South Eastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority by 1974. This collection documents the construction and expansion of the Reading Railroad and the company's tangible property and human resources throughout the twentieth century. The collection consists of negatives (glass plate and film), photographic prints, and color slide transparencies. The creator established a chronological order, which has been maintained. The collection is arranged into five series: Structures and objects, Passenger stations, Rolling stock, People, and Frank A. Weer's personal slides.

General Railway Signal Company supplied railway signaling equipment, systems, and services. In 1904, it was formed by the merger of three companies and was headquartered in Rochester, New York. This small collection of photographs showcases the company's work installing centralized traffic control systems, light signals, and car retarder systems.

The Geo D. Whitcomb Company was a manufacturer of coal mining machinery and industrial locomotives. The album is a factory salesman sample photograph album for the gasoline powered Whitcomb mining and switching engines. There are two Whitcomb catalogs and an original offprint from the 1932 Railway Age.

The Pennsylvania Railroad Company was the largest railroad in the United States in terms of corporate assets and traffic from the last quarter of the nineteenth century until the decline of the northeast's and midwest's dominance of manufacturing. Harry Richmond Hippler (1875-1958) was a pharmacist in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and an avid amateur photographer. This collection contains negatives primarily of Pennsylvania Railroad (PRR) train cars, both interior and exterior views. There are also images of train tracks, bridges, construction and other railroad related images. The bulk of the photographs date from the 1910s through the 1940s. It is possible that Harry R. Hippler was the photographer of some of the photographs in the collection.

The Transportation Act of 1920 required railroads to file with the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) for permission to eliminate tracks from their system. The collections consists of index cards to finance dockets involving the Pennsylvania Railroad, Penn Central Transportation Company, and Conrail.

The Jackson and Sharp Company, a manufacturer of railroad passenger cars, was incorporated in Delaware on February 24, 1869, as the successor to the partnership of Jackson & Sharp. This collection contains copy photographic prints of the company plant.

James Henry Yeager (1911-1986) was the industrial photographer for the Bethlehem Steel Corporation for thirty years, between 1946 and 1976. The first half of this collection contains photographs taken by James H. Yeager during his tenure at Bethlehem Steel as industrial photographer. The second half the this collection consists of photos and slides taken by Yeager while traveling in Pennsylvania, New York, and New England, and to a lesser degree Washington, DC and the southern United States.

This collection consists of glass plate negatives showing scenes from Carbon County, Pennsylvania during the second half of the nineteenth century, as well as a selection of archival prints. The majority of the images show scenes from Mauch Chunk (now Jim Thorpe) and the surrounding area, the Mauch Chunk Switchback Railway, and the waterfalls at Glen Onoko.

John Foster Tucker III (1950-2008) was a Philadelphia-born rail transit operating official and rail history enthusiast. This collection consists of photographs of trolleys, trains, rails lines, and rail stations in Philadelphia and the city's Pennsylvania suburbs, as well as offices, maintenance shops, and garages used by transit authorities. Most of the collection is devoted to SEPTA, but predecessor companies PTC (Philadelphia Transportation Company) and PSTC (Philadelphia Suburban Transportation Company) are also represented.

The Lehigh Valley Railroad was a railroad company in the northeastern United States primarily used to haul anthracite coal from Mauch Chunk (now Jim Thorpe), Pennsylvania, to Easton, Pennsylvania. This collection consists of twenty-two glass negatives and one box. Most photographs depict the rolling stock of Lehigh Valley Railroad dating to approximately some point between 1934 and 1948, based on engine numbers.

The Link-Belt Company was founded by William Dana Ewart (1851-1908), who had invented the detachable link-belt in 1874. The flexible metal belt provided a superior system of power transmission and was first used widely in farm machinery. This item is a booklet of cyanotype photographs of locomotive coaling stations designed, erected, and equipped by the Link-Belt Engineering Company.

This collection consists of glass plate negatives and photographic copy prints which were made directly from the negatives. The images document an array of subjects, though the majority of the images are of locomotives, railroad cars, railroad stations, and other railroad infrastructure. Various landscape and cityscape photographs are also included. Where it is possible to identify the locations, the majority of images document sites in Pennsylvania, though photographs of sites in New York state and Ontario are also present.

Louis T. Klauder and Associates (LTK) is a professional rail transportation engineering consulting firm. LTK were hired to work as consulting engineers for a joint project of the United States Department of Transportation and Pennsylvania Railroad called the Northeast Corridor Demonstration Project. This collection contains aerial photographs of the Northeast Corridor railroad route from New York to Boston taken between 1951 and 1965. These images were used to aid in the project. These aerial photographs make up a bulk of the collection. There are several sets of images that show train station exteriors along several routes on the Northeast Corridor. Thirty-eight photographs show the projects test track at Pueblo Army Depot in Colorado. There are four press photographs for Inflight Motion Pictures Inc. and a few renderings of proposed trains.

The Manitou and Pikes Peak Railway, which takes passengers to the summit of Pikes Peak mountain in Colorado, is the highest rack railway in the world and the highest railway in North America. This collection consists of a viewbook consisting of eight pages with photographs of the railway.

The Chisholm Bros. was a publishing company that produced railway, travel and tourists guides, and souvier albums which depicted routes of travel. This item is a hard cover souvenir with eighteen views of sights in Mauch Chunk, the "Switzerland of America." Images are on 12 unpaginated folded panels.

Lobdell Car Wheel Company was a producer of cast railroad car wheels in Wilmington, Delaware. This collection contains one photographic reproduction depicting employee Michael Munroe (1879-1969) pouring steel.

Historically, a stock certificate is a paper record of ownership in a company. Certain information is included on a stock certificate: number of share, identification number, a corporate seal, and signatures. This collection consists of predominantly unissued stock certificates for American railroad companies. There are also four certificates of tax free municipal bonds of the City of Philadelphia.

The Philadelphia, Easton and Water-Gap Railroad Company was incorporated in Pennsylvania on April 6, 1852, and renamed the North Pennsylvania Railroad Company on October 3, 1853. The collection consists of nineteenth and twentieth century portraits of officers and presidents.

The Pennsylvania New York Central Transportation Company was the creation of a 1968 merger of the Pennsylvania and New York Central railroads. In 1970, the "Penn Central" Transportation Company filed for bankruptcy and auctioned off Pennsylvania Railroad and New York Central Railroad memorabilia, pictures, and other materials. This collection consists of a poster for the auction of Penn Central railroad memorabilia. The poster includes images of lanterns and a locomotive, both in black, on brown paper with text announcing dates for auction and preview.

From 1925 to 1958, the Pennsylvania Railroad Company issued a series of advertising calendars, each measuring over two feet square. Of the thirty-three calendars published, twenty-eight were illustrated by Grif Teller (1899-1993). This small collection consists of six posters featuring the paintings from the 1949, 1950, 1951, 1953, 1954, and 1955 Pennsylvania Railroad advertising calendars. The title of the painting and the words "Pennsylvania Railroad" appear in the border beneath each image.

The Pennsylvania Railroad (PRR) was chartered in 1846 to complete an all-railroad network across the state. Between 1855 and 1874, the PRR underwent rapid expansion and emerged as one of the two largest railroad systems in the region east of the Mississippi and north of the Ohio. In 1910, the PRR entered Manhattan through tunnels under the Hudson and East Rivers. This collection consists of flyers and a brochure for Pennsylvania Railroad special fares or trains.

The Pennsylvania Railroad Company was the largest railroad in the United States in terms of corporate assets and traffic in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. This small collection of photographs covers the planning, surveying, and building of the Pennsylvania Railroad tunnels under the Hudson River, connecting New Jersey and New York in the early twentieth century.

The Pennsylvania Railroad Company was the largest railroad in the United States in terms of corporate assets and traffic from the last quarter of the nineteenth century until the decline of the northeast's and midwest's dominance of manufacturing. This collection of photographs primarily depict the PRR itself, but numerous views of similar facilities and equipment on other railroads, of nearby buildings and properties, or of standardized equipment and accessories that were collected for reference are included. Almost all of the photographs are the work of commercial photographers hired on short term contract, but some are prints from the company's own negatives. The collection have been arranged by subject and organized into three series: Equipment, trains, and personnel; Structures and right of way; and Company magazine photographs.

Founded in 1846 with headquarters in Philadelphia, the Pennsylvania Railroad Company (PRR) was an American Class-1 Railroad that pervaded early American culture. As a chief source of employment and transportation, the PRR served as a national symbol of America's progress as a leading industrial nation. This item is a poster featuring an E6s Atlantic class locomotive on the turntable at the Pennsylvania Railroad's 46th Street Enginehouse in West Philadelphia. The poster was created to celebrate 150th anniversary of the Pennsylvania Railroad's charter.

The Pennsylvania Railroad (PRR) was chartered in 1846 to complete an all-railroad network across the state. Between 1855 and 1874, the PRR underwent rapid expansion and emerged as one of the two largest railroad systems in the region east of the Mississippi and north of the Ohio. In 1910, the PRR entered Manhattan through tunnels under the Hudson and East Rivers. This is a viewbook or souvenir album containing views related to the Pennsylvania Railroad in New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, including stations, bridges, and tracks.

This is a small collection of three postcards. Two postcards have images of Pennsylvania Railroad stations in Greensburg and Swissvale, Pennsylvania. The third postcard is an advertisement for Pennsylvania Cement Co. showing the Whitney (N.C.) Dam. The Pennsylvania Railroad (PRR) was chartered in 1846 to completing an all-rail road across the state. In 1857 the Pennsylvania Railroad purchased the old Main Line system and eventually brought the entire line from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh under one management.

The Pennsylvania Railroad (PRR) was chartered in 1846 to completing an all-rail road across the state. Between 1855 and 1874, the PRR underwent rapid expansion and emerged as one of the two largest railroad systems in the area east of the Mississippi and north of the Ohio. This collection consists of two interviews conducted in 1998 in West Chester, Pennsylvania with five women who worked for the Pennsylvania Railroad.

Philadelphia and Reading Railroad Company (succeeded by the Reading Company) began construction in 1833 and the mainline from Philadelphia to Pottsville opened in 1842. This is a small collection of copperplate engravings and some medallions. They are presumably some sort of seat check for destinations along the mainline. The collection also contains three medallions, two related to the Jamestown Centennial Exposition in 1907 and one from Baldwins Standard dried beef.

The collection consists of digital scans of photographs of bridges on the Philadelphia Division of the Pennsylvania Railroad, which ran from Philadelphia to Harrisburg.

The Philadelphia Suburban Transportation Company operated bus and trolley lines, many of which originated in Upper Darby Township on the western border of Philadelphia and served Chester, Delaware, and Montgomery counties. Suburban Station and the Fidelity-Philadelphia Trust Company building are both located in Center City. The Red Arrow transportation lines are found in Philadelphia's western suburbs. This small collection consists of photographs of Suburban Station, railroad and trolley tracks, and bus shelters.